Research instruments and audience measurement services AudienceProject has reached a deal with Microsoft Advertising. The goal of the partnership is to give advertisers continuous and independent audience measurement. This is especially true for advertisers using Microsoft Platforms in the UK and Germany. The Danish software provider has extended its current programmatic advertising campaign audience measurement in Microsoft Advertising. It encompasses digital video, connected television, and Netflix commercials. This will assist in gaining knowledge about the frequency and reach of campaigns.
To optimize their media buying, advertisers can obtain insights about Microsoft Advertising alone or in conjunction with other channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Amazon. “Privacy-first data matching” between Microsoft Advertising and AudienceProject enables the measurement. It is only being rolled out to the UK and Germany at first because the two companies are currently testing to make sure the integration and the resulting measurement meet a range of minimum standards for independent measurement. AudienceProject confirmed that as the service is extended globally, more nations—especially France—will follow.
Brian Meritam Larsen, vice president of partnerships at AudienceProject, said
We experience a high demand for independent measurement of campaigns bought through Microsoft Advertising – both alone and in combination with other channels. We are very pleased that we can now offer advertisers this, helping them get valuable insights for more efficient budget allocation.
Jason Gruber, senior director of business development at Microsoft Advertising, shared
We want to help advertisers reach audiences across screens with premium advertising. We are pleased to be collaborating with AudienceProject, as their audience measurement solution allows advertisers to better understand how effectively their ads are reaching their desired audiences.
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The co-viewing ad measurement plans that YouTube had originally planned to implement in the first quarter of 2024 have been postponed. They are now anticipated for the upcoming fourth quarter. Initially, the video platform intended to begin measuring and accounting for multiple viewers in a household. They would do so by using its co-viewing metric. Although there has been strong resistance to the new measurement plans from ad buyers since their announcement last summer, YouTube intends to roll out co-viewing to provide advertisers with a more complete image of their audience on the platform. Some executives are dubious about how precisely co-viewing measurement will count viewers following the specifications of a campaign and how the adjustments will impact the cost of ads.
Agency executives expressed their hope that YouTube would use the delay as an opportunity to improve its co-viewing measurement plans. Furthermore, they also hope it addresses some of their issues and shares more information about its methodology with ad buyers. Since YouTube announced in the summer that it would transact against self-reported co-viewing measurement figures, ad buyers have been against the platform’s co-viewing measurement plans. Advertisers can choose to transact against Comscore’s and Nielsen’s co-viewing measurement separately on YouTube.
Prioritizing the global market launch of third-party measurement and co-viewing measurement validation ahead of the transaction start date is YouTube’s stated strategy. Additionally, some agency executives simply don’t trust co-viewing measurement in general. Measurement of co-viewing is not a precise science. It usually takes into account a panel of chosen audience members. It is then projected to the entire audience using a co-viewing factor (e.g., 1.6) that multiplies the number of impressions served by the average number of people who are probably watching on the opposite side of those impressions.
Even though the math is a little fuzzy, it has proven sufficient for gauging traditional TV advertisements. These are primarily assessed using broad age and gender categories. However, agency executives are unsure of how precisely co-viewing measurement will count. Or more accurately, not count viewers according to a campaign’s targeting parameters given the level of audience targeting that advertisers are used to on platforms like YouTube. In light of this, agency executives see YouTube’s postponement as a chance to review the proper way to account for co-viewing in streaming, not just on YouTube.
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